The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis

The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis

Artist John Trumbull served in the Revolutionary War as an aide to George Washington.  After the war he pursued a career as an artist.  In 1785 he began sketching out ideas for a series of large scale paintings to commemorate the major events of the American Revolution.  In 1791 he went to Yorktown, Virginia to sketch the site of the British surrender to General George Washington.

Some twenty five years later, Congress commissioned Trumble to paint four large paintings to be hung in the U.S. Capitol rotunda, one of these, The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis was completed in 1820, and depicts the surrender of Lt. General Charles, the Earl Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.  Trumbull received $8,000 for the painting (which would be approximately $200,000 in today’s money).

George Washington did not think that Yorktown would be the last battle of the Revolutionary War, and felt that it was his duty to keep the Continental Army together until a final peace treaty was signed.  Despite the devastating loss at Yorktown, loyalist militias continued to fight throughout the back country.

Peace talks began in April 1782.  A preliminary treaty finally came on November 30, 1782, more than a year after Yorktown. The final treaty was signed on September 3, 1783, and ratified by the Continental Congress early in 1784.

Hiram Powers, "The Greek Slave"

The Greek Slave

In 1844, American sculptor Hiram Powers completed a sculpture he called, “The Greek Slave”, which was to become one of the most popular art works of the 19^th century.  The statue is of a naked young woman, bound in chains.  In one hand she holds a small cross.

Powers described the work:

“The Slave has been taken from one of the Greek Islands by the Turks, in the time of the Greek revolution, the history of which is familiar to all. Her father and mother, and perhaps all her kindred, have been destroyed by her foes, and she alone preserved as a treasure too valuable to be thrown away. She is now among barbarian strangers, under the pressure of a full recollection of the calamitous events which have brought her to her present state; and she stands exposed to the gaze of the people she abhors, and awaits her fate with intense anxiety, tempered indeed by the support of her reliance upon the goodness of God. Gather all these afflictions together, and add to them the fortitude and resignation of a Christian, and no room will be left for shame.”

The statue became a rallying symbol for a number a groups.  In 1848, Lucy Stone saw the statue and broke into tears, seeing the statue as the symbol of man’s oppression of the female sex.  Stone took up the cause of women’s rights.  Abolitionists drew parallels between the plight of The Greek Slave and the plight of slaves in the American South.

Hiram Powers' studio produced six full-scale marble versions of The Greek Slave for private collectors.  The statue is now on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among other places.

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